Via WaPo's Wonkblog comes the definitive guide to critiquing research findings that rub you the wrong way. And while this chart refers more specifically to studies on things like health and budget policy, it works surprisingly well for scientific studies, as well.

Whether the research was conducted nationally or locally, for example, is not unlike asking whether the test subjects in a psych study were Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic (aka WEIRD). The question of whether the research findings generally mesh with those of previous investigations? Science historians have written entirebooks on this.